Archive for the 'Recommended reading' Category

I don’t blog here at After Gadget anymore. I moved to SharonWachsler.com over a year ago, but I still get notices from WordPress telling me that new people have subscribed to After Gadget. This post is for you subscribers to tell you my REALLY BIG NEWS and to invite you to subscribe to my ACTIVE blog, sharonwachsler.com because this blog you’re subscribed to here generally has no new content!

Moving alone: My big news is that I no longer have multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), and I no longer have chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFIDS/ME), and I no longer have chronic Lyme disease and coinfections! Thus, I no longer need a service dog! Barnum has been “career changed” to “demo/training/sport dog” as I work my way toward becoming a professional dog trainer.

Barnum and I have not started our sport training yet. He has had an ear infection for 16 months (no, that’s not a typo!) which has been treated with everything you can imagine, from ointments to oral antibiotics to acupuncture to full-sedation ear flushes. We think this very nasty chronic infection is due to underlying hypothyroidism (already being treated) and food allergies (which we’re sussing out now). This means that he’s on an eight-week trial of ostrich and quinoa. Although I have found ways to do treats and toys with ostrich and quinoa, it’s incredibly expensive and time-consuming, so I’m waiting to do classes with him till the food situation is easier. We will start introducing new foods into his diet in three weeks and see how he does with them. (Yay!) I already know he’s allergic to chicken. I am really, really hoping he is not allergic to beef, pork, turkey, and/or duck.

If you want to keep up with me and Barnum, or if you want to know how I recovered my health after 18 years of severe, disabling illness, please check out my current website, SharonWachsler.com. That is where I blog now. That’s where I have info about my writing, consulting, dog training, etc. If you want to skip directly to my recovery story, including “before” and “after” pictures and videos, read the post I published a few days ago. If you want to learn more about neuroplasticity and HOW I recovered, visit my page on neuroplasticity and my recovery.

I’ll leave commenting open here for a short time to support ease for readers who are not familiar with my new/current blog, but my strong preference is for you to comment on my new site (so I don’t have to keep logging in and out of two different websites). Thank you so much for your support and interest in my blogging and all-things-dog over the years! I really appreciate all I have learned and continue to learn from you!

If you subscribe to After Gadget by email you should already have had your subscription transferred to my new blog at SharonWachsler.com. If you follow this blog by other means (RSS, for example), I hope you’ll follow/subscribe at my new blog since I don’t plan to post new content here anymore.

UPDATE: New posts are going up all the time at sharonwachsler.com. I don’t anticipate posting any new material here, although I will keep all After Gadget pages and posts up as archives. If you’d like to support my work, please spread the word about my new site! Thank you!

Back before Gadget died, before Barnum was born, before I started blogging, before Lyme disease ravaged my life, I was a writer. And now I am becoming one again, thanks in part to you reading this blog and encouraging me. Thank you!

Back in the Day

Disability Literature and Culture

Yes, Virginia, there was writing before blogs. I used to manage and edit Breath & Shadow, a literary journal of disability culture, and I wrote occasional essays and articles (some humor, some disability studies), short stories (usually erotica, though not always), and poems for a variety of paper and online magazines, newsletters, papers, journals, and anthologies. From 1992 through 2006, I slowly built up a writing career. It was a challenge because I was disabled by chronic illness very soon after I graduated from college, so there were many years where getting published at all was a big deal each time it happened.

In January of 2007, I moved house, which I spent months trying to recover from. That summer, I got Lyme disease, which picked up my world and shook it like a snow globe. A lot of the time, my world still whirls around me in chaos. From 2007 through 2010, I did almost no writing. I handed over the reigns of Breath & Shadow to another editor, to whom I’m very grateful. During my most extreme years of illness, I did manage to write a couple of essays — a grueling undertaking — and a very small number of short erotica pieces. I also conducted periodic interviews of activists with multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) for Our Toxic Times,* the newsletter for the Chemical Injury Information Network. If you have MCS or want to keep abreast of issues relating to environment and health, I highly recommend joining. The newsletter is excellent, and you will be supporting a 501(c)3 nonprofit that puts every penny to good use.

MCS: Roller coaster or merry-go-round?

Aside from the interviews, most of the stuff that got published in that time period were pieces that had been written earlier. Some were reprints; others were pieces that were waiting for the right home. And, after Gadget died, in December 2009, I started this blog. Blogging, I discovered, did not require the extremes of care, editing, proofing, and other work I usually put into writing. It offered me some slack that enabled me to continue writing.

“Professional” — or something**

Slowly, in the past two years, I have begun to write professionally again. I’m still hampered by severe swings in my cognitive and physical functioning and by needing to spend so much energy on training Barnum, but I’m managing to pick up a slow, stuttering sort of momentum. I know many of you read this blog because you’re interested in the topic of service dogs, dog training, recovering from loss, and other topics I cover. Others of you have told me you subscribe because you like my writing. I’m preparing for a big writing undertaking (a book, actually), and it would be very helpful to have more readers “follow me” to some of my other writing sites when my book project devours my soultakes over my life becomes the focus of my passion.

I wanted to tell you where else you can read my writing and ask you to subscribe/follow me on those sites, because I don’t generally post here about my writing elsewhere. I have some big projects I’m working toward — I hope to unveil the details about The Book in upcoming months — but meanwhile I need to keep stretching and exercising my writing muscles that are a bit stiff and atrophied from disuse. I would love it if you’d join me in some of my new writing ventures!

Dykes, Dogs, Disability, and . . . Maine?

Here’s where you can find some of my work:

– My writing blog, Bed, Body & Beyond, focuses on life as a writer with disabilities. Although historically I haven’t posted there as often as here, I have been posting there more frequently lately. I also put a lot of care into the posts that appear there. Sometimes a great deal of research and thought goes into a single post, such as this one about the language of disability.

The longest alt tag ever?

Lately I’ve focused more on being an erotica writer, but so far I haven’t actually published anything x-rated on my blog. However, there have been requests for excerpts, so I might start posting some teasers, perhaps focusing on stories with a disabled protagonist (hint for upcoming book project!). Rest assured, if I do post something explicit, I’ll put NSFW (“not safe for work”) in the subject line so people can make an informed decision about whether to read it. Most of the time, so far, material on that site is not remotely explicit.

Recent posts include interviews with editors of books in which my work has appeared in 2012, a discussion on the language associated with disability, some reviews of my work, and pages with blurbs and links to online and book publications. As my work gets published elsewhere (I have essays, fiction, and possibly poetry coming down the pipeline) I’ll post interviews, excerpts, and links. I’d love if you subscribe/follow my writing blog! (Note: This is a Blogger blog, which means that subscribing by RSS is easy for anyone, but subscribing by email requires doing a Captcha [“word verification”]. If Captcha is a barrier for you, please contact me and I will subscribe you. I apologize for the inconvenience.)

I’m ba-ack…

– Ability Maine — the website of disability news, views, information, and literature, especially (but not exclusively) with a Maine focus. One example is an interview I did with Arnold Mann, the investigative reporter for Time and USA Weekend who published a fantastic book on corporate and government complicity and coverups of chemical injury.

I’ve also started a blog for Ability Maine — Ability Maine Blog. At the blog I post blurbs and links about new content at the main Ability Maine page as well as its literary journal, Breath & Shadow. I also have started posting short, time-sensitive posts relating to disability news, events, culture or other pieces of interest to the disability community in Maine or around the world. Subscribing to the Ability Maine blog is a great way to read my new writing and found out about information of interest to the disability community. Those are actually *short* blog posts, which is a rarity with me, you know. (Note: This is also a Blogger blog, which means that subscribing by email requires doing a Captcha [“word verification”]. If Captcha is a barrier for you, please contact me and I will subscribe you. I apologize for the inconvenience.)

IAADP logo

– Partner’s Forum, the newsletter of the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners (IAADP). I have written occasional articles for PF for many years, usually training tips or equipment ideas. Now I am also helping the editor, Joan Froling, with locating, editing, and writing work on what will hopefully be an ongoing basis! You need to be a member of IAADP — a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization — to get the most recent issues of PF. Anyone is welcome to join. It’s a great way to support and learn about what’s happening in the assistance dog world. Partner members (those partnered with a working assistance dog) also receive additional benefits with membership.

– The Chronic Writer(??) — Way back in the day, I wrote a monthly humor column called Sick Humor for Ability Maine. It was an outgrowth of my comic strip by the same name. “A twisted look at life with disability.” When I was invited back to write for Ability Maine, I really wanted to start writing again about the life of a writer with chronic illness, although I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be purely humor/satire. I wanted to do interviews with other writers with disabilities or chronic illness, write about some of the complexities of writing with impaired cognition and limited energy, the politics, the unexpected gifts of writing. I planned to call it The Chronic Writer.

I haven’t yet written an official Chronic Writer piece, although I’ve written lots of partial pieces, and I’ve published pieces at Bed, Body & Beyond and at Ability Maine that could certainly fit under the “Chronic Writer” rubric. My current plan is to move both my blogs (After Gadget and Bed, Body & Beyond) to my sharonwachsler.com domain (which is very, very old and outdated, so I am not linking to it) and launch The Chronic Writer there. That website would be the home for all things Sharon-the-writer-Wachslery and would also allow me more freedom than using Blogger or WordPress freeware (especially as I’ve recently been made aware of an issue with WP Terms of Service). But, it’s been my plan for years to update my domain, so let’s call this a work-in-progress in progress, shall we?

So, that’s my big news. It’s a bit scary to make this announcement as if it’s some done deal, as if I can be relied upon to keep producing. Because if I had a dollar for every time I’ve said, “I’m doing better. I’m starting to write again,” and then discovered that I couldn’t even finish a piece of flash fiction or a blog post . . . I would have made a lot more money than I ever have on anything I’ve published! But that is, after all, the way of the Chronic Writer.

– Sharon, the muse of Gadget, and Barnum, SD

*I’m still doing OTT interviews when time and energy permit, so if you are chemically injured, and you are involved in any form of activism, very broadly interpreted, please drop me a line, and we’ll see if you’re a good fit for my series. My goal is to profile one activist from each US state (and then perhaps I’ll move on to US territories and other countries after that).

**My definition of professional writing: getting paid occasional paltry*** sums for huge amounts of work OR getting paid nothing to have your work appear in academic or literary venues. This definition is slightly different if your name is J. K. Rowling or Stephen King.

***I recently got a royalty check for $1.36. That was $1.36 more than I had expected to earn in royalties for the year for that piece!

I started this blog with the goal of providing support and resources for other grieving partners of assistance dogs. For a variety of reasons, I have not posted most of the information I’ve collected. One reason was that I wanted to present it all in a complete, comprehensive, and organized fashion, and I just haven’t managed that yet.

Lately, I’ve come across many people facing loss around assistance dogs: A friend online who had to retire her guide dog and has not been able to get another yet. A client of one of my healthcare providers whose service dog has died. A post on a social network by someone who’s experiencing anticipatory grief as she sees her service dog aging. A friend who is struggling with serious health issues in her assistance dog and doesn’t know what the future holds for their working partnership.

All of this need for support — and the fact that my grief has softened into something much more comfortable — has spurred me to action. I’m trying to post a resource here and there, when I’m able, because when I was coping with Gadget’s illness and death, I needed much more support than I got. I found so little in the way of resources that met my needs for shared reality around the loss of not just a companion and family member, but a personal assistant, a breathing complex of assistive technology, a partner, a coworker, a teacher and student. Many kind people offered support, and I was and am grateful for it. Still, losing an assistance dog is a unique form of loss, and I was lonely for others who understand all the aspects of this complex loss.

Here is one resource I did find specific to service dog grief, and it was extremely helpful.

The Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement (APLB) used to have a service dog committee that was specifically for support of assistance dog partners dealing with the retirement or death of their canine partner (both anticipatory grief and grief after-the-fact). They had an excellent page on the unique issues associated with assistance dog loss, as well as an online chat. Unfortunately, these services are no longer available.

However, it’s still possible to access their terrific page describing assistance dog loss issues through a cache-retrieval site called “The Way Back Machine.” I started working with a new therapist when Gadget was dying. One of the first things I did was to print out this information and mail it to her. It gave her more understanding of how this loss was affecting my life.

Please note: Because this is a cached (not current) document, the phone numbers and links (names, email addresses, events) are not current. Nonetheless, the information about what it means to lose an assistance dog or end a partnership is timeless.

I recommend giving copies to family, friends, coworkers, or counselors who are willing to learn more about the unique issues in losing an assistance dog through death or retirement.I also recommend this page to assistance dog partners, themselves, as it can be very validating about what you’re going through.

To see my current list of grief resources, please visit the After Gadget Grief Resources page. I hope to continue to update the page as I add more live links. Please share this post with anyone you know who has suffered or is facing the loss of an assistance dog.

Some twenty years ago, my friend Linda introduced me to the expression, “Feeding two birds with one hand.” I really like this expression. Not only is it kinder than “killing two birds with one stone,” but it’s more evocative. I can actually picture holding my hand out, full of bird seed, and having two birds land on it, whereas not only do I have no desire to imagine killing two birds with a stone, I really don’t know how you’d go about it if you wanted to.

So today’s post is about what I’ve been doing when I’m not here posting, and how this is an opportunity to bring diverse aspects of my life together and feed multiple birds — after all, I have two hands, so I should be able to feed at least four birds!

Bird 1 – Connection & Contribution

I’ve also gotten to “meet” a lot of wonderful people — friends of Marlena’s or friends of my NVC friends — who donated items to the auction. It feels good to be part of something where people are coming together in a spirit of generosity and love. Nothing to be sad about there!

It may be called a "mourning dove," but I was happy to get this picture of it looking at me.

Bird 2 – Increasing Access to Fragrance-Free & Nontoxic Products

Some of my most commented-upon posts here at After Gadget have been those in which I’ve discussed my MCS and/or how fragranced products affect me. Many of you, my beloved readers, have gone in search of nontoxic, fragrance-free products — for your own health, for the access and safety of those with chemical sensitivities around you, and in solidarity with me. This has been so surprising and touching for me!

I also know that many of you have limited budgets, maybe not much access to trying out different products, or live outside the US, which sometimes means different brands than I know about. I am pleased to announce that there are several small, family owned businesses (many of them owned and run by people with MCS) that make nontoxic, fragrance-free products who have donated products or gift certificates to Marlena’s auction! Some of them will ship outside the US! You can test out MCS-safer products while also helping out an MCSer! Check out these listings! (For those who want an inexpensive way to test out several fragrance-free products, I suggest the Magick Botanicals trial/travel kit.)

Hunting and pecking for the safe products in the scented aisles of a store? That can get downright hairy!

Bird 3 – Simplifying & Digging Out

I have too much stuff. My house is full of stuff! Stuff collects dust and mold and dander, all of which I’m allergic to. It gets in the way and leaves less room to maneuver my chair. But some of this stuff is perfectly good stuff. Stuff I can’t use, but that someone else could enjoy — brand-new books I was given but can’t read because I can’t read print books. Snarky posters I got as freebies when the company I ordered from messed up my order. Unused nontoxic/natural lip balm with peppermint oil in it. Inkjet office supplies I bought, forgetting that I now have a laser printer. It will feel great if I can give this stuff a new home.

This red-bellied woodpecker is chipping away at the fat, digging out. Inspiring!

Bird 4 – Bird Feeder as Blog Fodder?

I’m never short on ideas for blogs. In fact, my “Posts” folder has almost as many drafts as published posts, and that doesn’t even include all the posts I have in my head that I want to write! Still, now that I’m doing something with a deadline (the auction is only up for ten days), something I’ve invested so much time and energy in, something that’s so important to me, it pushes me to crank out a post to share with the world.

This gives me opportunities, such as to use several of my recent winter bird photos without writing the perfect Birding Thursday post.

can give me several different perspectives on something, depending on how I look at it.

Or how it looks at me....

It’s true that the tone of this post has been tongue-in-cheek and my objective transparent. Nonetheless, I am still appreciative of the seed Linda planted all those years ago of this kinder, gentler way to speak and act, which is part of the work of NVC, for me.

Especially because Linda remains one of my nearest and dearest friends. She’s the one who told me about Marlena’s NVC classes. Taking them together has deepened and strengthened our friendship. Maybe one of you will get to meet her, too?

– Sharon, the muse of Gadget, and a bored and demanding Barnum, SD/SDiT/hindrance dog

This is possibly the longest time I’ve gone without posting since the early months of this blog. There have been a confluence of events that have brought about this non-postingness.

One is, and I know this will come as a total shocker to those of you who follow my blog, I’ve been really sick. For realz! What with all my chronic illnesses, you’d think this wouldn’t surprise me, but it still kinda does. The issue is that I have been sicker, overall, since Octoberish, with some periods of being much sicker and/or much longer than usual. Every once in a while, I have an “up” day, and I think, “Huzzah! The suckiness hath lifted!” But nay, ’tis not so. The form changes, but the suckiness continueth. For the last couple of weeks, the major issue has been migraines every day.

This is really the first time since my Lyme treatment started to work, around spring 2009, that I have plateaued or dipped and not made a comeback eventually. My doctor and I are not sure what to make of this. A reinfection? An undiagnosed coinfection? A resurgence of babesia (which we had to stop treating because my liver couldn’t handle the antimalarial drugs required)? Or some of the drugs have stopped working? Or are one of the drugs making me sick?

It could also be an MCS thing — foods I’m reacting to that I’m not aware of. Inhalant allergies could have gotten worse, like dust and mold. Maybe there’s some sort of outdoor pollution occurring that I don’t know about that’s doing me in? The most frightening specter of all — could I be allergic to Barnum? I just can’t even deal with the hideousness of that proposition. I was allergic to my cat for years, not knowing he was the cause of my round-the-clock migraines. This worries me.

I also have written two long pieces. One is an essay for a really kick-butt anthology on intersections of oppression in feminism (most of the pieces are primarily about race/racism in feminism; mine is mostly about ableism in the feminist movement). The other writing project was a long, complex piece of erotica that was inspired by a documentary I watched on Frida Kahlo. And I’m hoping, if I hear back from various editors in time, and if I’m functional enough, to get in a few more submissions — work that is already done and just looking for a home. (This time of year seems to be heavy with deadlines; I don’t know why, but it always is.)

After I got these two pieces in, I found out that a book that was coming out that I thought had my work in it does not actually have my work in it. My story was accepted by the editor, but when it went to the publisher, they cut it. Normally, I’d have heard months ago, but the editor’s computer got hacked, so her email informing me never got to me. I found it out when I saw my name was not listed on the back cover of the book! It doesn’t happen often, this editor-says-yes-publisher-says-no, but when it does, it really bites. It feels like you’ve been sucker-punched: “You’re in! You’ll get published. You’ll get paid.” Then several months later, “Oh, by the way, the publisher hates your piece (cuz, although nobody says it, they don’t think it’s ‘marketable.’) Sorry!”

But that’s just a blip. The really big problem with writing is that when I write, I can’t do anything else. I can’t train with Barnum. I can’t talk on the phone to friends. I can’t blog. I went more than two weeks without bathing to get the short story done by the deadlineextension the editor gave me. And I have to push myself beyond my total physical and mental breaking point to do it.

So, why do I do it? Well, partly because sometimes, when I write, I feel ridiculously happy and connected to myself and some sense of purpose that I never have in any other part of my life. Some of it is that usually these writing gigs pay something (paltry as it might be, and believe me, it’s generally quite paltry), and I have very expensive illnesses, and I worry about spending more (on supplements and air filters and house maintenance and my Lyme doctor who isn’t covered by insurance) than I am bringing in. So, this is a feeble attempt to put my finger in that dam. Some of it is that I just don’t know who I would be if I wasn’t a writer. I think I wouldn’t be me, anymore.

And, along those lines, I am working out a plan with the folks at AbilityMaine to return there as a staff writer. I’m really excited about this. It feels weird because Norm, my dear friend who died three years ago, founded AbilityMaine. So, it took some adjusting to the idea of working there without him, and I sort of flopped around undecidedly for a while. But I do know Norm would be very happy that AM is still in existence, and he was the biggest booster of my writing of anyone I’ve known, so I’m sure he would be happy for me to return. It’s just . . . odd. I will fill you in as developments, er, develop. And meanwhile you should start reading AbilityMaine so you can bask in its fabulousness.

Also, Breath & Shadow, the literary journal I founded, was an outgrowth of AM, and I might be writing for them, too. Again, we’re still not sure exactly how this will all shake out, but if you don’t read Breath & Shadow, you really should, because it’s been in the excellent hands of Chris Kuell since I left in 2007.

One great thing about writing for AbilityMaine is that I will once again get to be a free agent! I won’t be constrained by the whims of the publishing world’s ableism and other bullshittery. As long as I know what the parameters are of what they’re looking for, if the writing is good, it’ll get published. This is such a rare and wonderful and almost-unheard-of-thing in the writing world, I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity.

Where is Barnum in all this, you may wonder? Mostly on my bed, leaving big piles of dirt and dog-hair tumbleweeds in his wake. His coat is really long now, and he does look gorgeous as long as we can keep up with the grooming (which is a bear!). The good part about me being so consumed in my writing is that he is extremely eager for my attention when I have it to spare (or even when I don’t). So, he’s been extra cuddly, and he’s also very into training on the occasions I’m up to it.

Primarily, we are working on generalizing and learning the cue for turning on and off lights, generalizing and learning the cue for pulling doors shut (as opposed to nudging them shut or pulling them open), and adding some “attention seeking behavior/alert” to his “go find person” skill. (More about that last one in a separate post.) We’re also working a little bit every day on handling/grooming, such as keeping his mouth still with my fingers or a toothbrush inside, allowing grooming of the “sensitive bits” of his coat, recall, fetch, and working retrieve.

This Monday, February 27, will be our two-year Gotcha Day anniversary! Can you believe it? I haven’t decided what I’d like to do for it. I really want to do a photo essay or video of all the things he’s learned in two years, but between technical difficulties and extremely low energy, I think that’s unlikely. But, I am very proud of him.

Tonight (Wednesday night), is the first night of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana. I’m actually doing something for Rosh Hashana, which is a big deal. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve done anything for a holiday, and it’s been even longer since I’ve done anything I felt good about for a holiday, especially a Jewish holiday. Especially one of the High Holy Days.

I’m getting together, by phone, with some of my friends and fellow students from my Nonviolent Communication (NVC) class. I’ve pulled together some poems and some ideas of things to discuss, and sent out a transliteration of the shechianu (in both the masculine and feminine). I’m actually looking forward to it!

It’s really nice to have this glimmer of joy. I appreciate that even though I’ve been so sick lately and experiencing so much grief (this is a hard time of year for me — a lot of bad things happened to me in October through December), I can still find some happiness and a sense of meaning.

If you want to read some of the wonderful poems we’ll be using for our gathering, here they are: